Where We Are: a screening of short films about places and spaces, August 2, 2024

Friday, August 2, 2024 10-11pm @ Caffe Aroma
957 Elmwood Ave, Buffalo, NY, United States, New York

Facebook Event page: https://www.facebook.com/share/HyuLYb58v8F1TaYT/

A free program of short films about landscapes (in the world and in our heads) featuring current Media Study folks (Carl Lee, Vav Vavrek, Laura Kraning) and past (Dorothea Braemer, Vincenzo Mistretta), to coincide with the 2024 Buffalo Infringement Festival and the broadcast of Carl's and Vav’s films on WMHT’s TVFilm. TRT approximately 30 minutes.

Unity Island by Carl Lee (2024, 13:30)
Unity Island looks at a 1/4 square mile stretch of land situated between Niagara River and Black Rock Canal at the border of Buffalo, NY and Fort Erie, Ontario. A railroad traverses the island from Canada to the U.S. passing by a park visited by picnickers, bicyclists, and fishermen. Freight trains cross a canal over a swing bridge which rotates open for boats and the occasional freight ship. A hill sits on the former site of an incineration plant and garbage dump. From there you can get a 360° view of the island, the city, the river, and the highway. I’ve been going there for walks with our dog for years. Filmed on 16mm in triptych, Unity Island is a personal exploration of the site over time in an attempt to reveal its beauty, its moments, and its contradictions.

planet________: signal lost by Vav Vavrek (2022, 3:00)
An experimental science-fiction film ... shot with very expired film inside a lomo kino and hand-processed with vintage 1980's C-41 chemicals.

Sfantumata Series #2: Dirt Cheap Abstractions by Vincenzo Mistretta (2023, 4:10)
Sfantumata,’ is a mutable Sicilian word heard in my community of Aspra which can be used to identify something as ‘degraded’, ‘broken down’, or ‘Sloppy’. This video is created by taking various still images of the sloppy displays at Dirt Cheap retail stores and animating them in a sequence where the image changes every two frames. Over time the sequence loops and is layered over itself multiple times to create a degraded abstraction that evokes a feeling of anxiety and chaos. The sound was recorded at Dirt Cheap stores and digitally manipulated and distorted to complement the degraded images of the video.

Snails by Dorothea Braemer (2022, 4:00)
A dream about my mother and snails that my daughter interprets for me.
Co-directed by Kyla Kegler, who also provided the puppets.
Camera/Color Correction/Sound Mix by Carl Lee
Actors: Dorothea Braemer & Lindsey Griffith
Voices: Dorothea Braemer & Greta Lee
Music: “Mount Pleasant, Dawn” by Thalia Brisson

de-composition by Laura Kraning (2023, 3:00)
A textural macro collage of a rust belt landscape- scratched, splattered, dripping, cracking, and bursting to the surface. Photographed and meticulously edited over one year in Buffalo, NY, the reverberant tones of the New York Central rail line provide the rhythmic pulse to a rapid cascade of multi-hued material decay and metallic de-composition.